Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Here we have a couple more terrain pieces I painted last week for our gaming club.

First, an Imperial Industrial Facility that performs the indispensable job of turning clean water into toxic waste (!)

Next, we have the ruins of an old Brothel. During its glorious days, it was most definitely the place to go if you were trying to find the Imperial Officers on their leisure periods. Now it serves the Imperium in a somewhat different way, by providing cover for snipers.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Last saturday, I had a game of Pax Stellarum with a friend. It was a medium sized game, at 1550 points. I played the Centauri and he played the Narn.

He had initiative, so I had to deploy first. I left a good part of my forces on reserve. He deployed his entire fleet on the table, facing my flagship and its escorts through a narrow gap between 2 asteroid strips.

(my reserves)

A very important aspect of Pax Stellarum is to keep an eye on where each terrain feature is heading to, as all terrain moves around the table each turn at a pattern (speed and direction) determined previous to the beggining of the game.

This is going to influence your movement, as you have to carefully plan your tactical options, according to how the table is going to look like on the next turns.

For instance, the 2 asteroid strips seen below where slowly closing in to each other, so racing into my opponent could leave me trapped with no room to maneuver if he decided to surround me by taking to my right flank. So I choosed to divert more power to maneuvering jets so I could turn sharper, and so I headed to my right without ever putting myself between the asteroids.

As I maneuvred, the Octurion took its aim at a G`Quan, pouring fire from its strong broadsides down the Narn scum, managing to score a critical hit on its sole Target Control System, as well as reducing its Shields and Hull a bit.

Here I believe the Narn armada found itself in a crossroads. Should they they try to chase my fleet from the rear (thus risking getting caught between the asteroid strips as they advanced toward one another), or should they head for where I was heading and then fight my fleet face to face? Or perhaps they could split forces and let the small, fast ships chase me from the rear.

The Narns ended up avoiding the asteroids, too, and set course to rendezvous with the Centauri close to the terran planet on the middle of the table.

On the second turn, my reserves arrived, jumping out of Hyperspace right at the back of the Narn fleet, and began punishing it. The already damaged G`Quan didn`t last long, and the other one maneuvered to face the 2 Primus, exchanging heavy fire all the way.

The Narn redirected almost all its forces to counter my reserve detachment, leaving the Bin`Tak Battleship unescorted and alone to face my flagship and the squadron of Vorchans backing it up.

A poor ramming action costed the Narn an entire squadron of Sho`kos frigates, while only inflicting light damage on a Primus in exchange.

Meanwhile, the Bin`Tak was under heavy fire by the Octurion and its escorts, and when its Shields Generator went down, a series of critical hits where scored, leaving the enemy flagship in considerable danger of destruction.

(the crippled flagship: Shields down, Prow and Starboard weapons out of action, one Target Control System non-operational and Engines and half capacity)

The Bin`Tak maneuvered away from my flagship. I sent the vorchans at full speed to chase it down, but the enemy fleet - which had already failed its morale check for total hull loss - was prepearing to jump into hyperspace and disengaged before I had a chance to finish the Bin`Tak off.

End of game, the Centauri are victorious, in a somewhat easy battle, since my opponent was playing Pax Stellarum for the first time, so I had a huge advantage here, evidently. Hope to play more space battles soon!

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

My terrain painting franzy continues, apparently, and I've finished more stuff that have been waiting for paint for quite a while - some of these kits have been sitting on their boxes for years (!).

First, there is the Modular Gaming Hill, from GW. Our club just acquired 2 kits, and these are amazing terrain pieces, that work well standing alone on a corner of the table...

... Combined in two...

... Or combined in four!

Perfect to create area terrain on corners of the table or on the middle of it. Very adaptable, and fit for any system, on any scale.

Next, a couple monuments - an Imperial Hero from the Honored Imperium set and a wizard from some Lord of The Rings terrain set, perhaps - and a defence barrier, custom made by a member of the club (I just gave it a base and painted it).

We also have a medieval watch tower, also created by a member of our group, a custom built stone defence barrier and a couple more pieces - old tires and something that looks like a fuel reservoir.

Finnaly, we have a couple Citadel Woods, which are some of the terrain pieces I'm most found of. Those are really beautiful kits, and I wanted them to have a late autumn look, as this seem to fit their design quite well. I may add some static grass to their base to complete their look.

There is much stuff still on the works, and also some things of my own, as a Space Marine Fleet from Battlefleet Gothic, and they will be showing up here soon.

I'd like to take a moment to mention an amazing kit I found on Ebay, recently. It's the Mega Hive One Modular Wargaming set.

This kit has remarkable detail, comes at a very good price, and they are modular, which means you can join many parts together and create any structure you can think of. Really, the limit is your imagination. I purchased 10 kits and am building a Imperial Fortress with them.

I'm so excited with how it is coming out, that I decided to buy more kits and further expand my fortress, making it trully epic and "40kish".